If you bought a consumer Lenovo laptop in the past six to eight months, you may have ended up with an unwelcome addition. Here’s how to kill the Superfish malware — and prevent it from hijacking your browser sessions or exposing your private data.

A new flaw in Apple’s EFI firmware allows attackers to load a bootkit malware that can’t be removed, bypassed, or blocked, save by physically swapping components in the system — and it takes minutes and minimal intervention to run.

New documents leaked by Edward Snowden reveal two NSA programs that seek to build a “useful quantum computer” that can break all known forms of classical encryption. Such a quantum computer would obviously give the NSA unprecedented access to encrypted communications, but a working quantum computer is also vital for defensive purposes: If someone else gets their hands on a quantum computer first, then it is the US government that will suddenly have all of its encrypted communications cracked wide open.

Security researchers have successfully broken one of the most secure encryption algorithms, 4096-bit RSA, by listening — yes, with a microphone — to a computer as it decrypts some encrypted data. The attack is fairly simple and can be carried out with rudimentary hardware. The repercussions for the average computer user are minimal, but if you’re a secret agent, power user, or some other kind of encryption-using miscreant, you may want to reach for the Rammstein when decrypting your data.

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